An Academician's Guide to Managing Seminars, Conferences, Conventions, Symposiums and Workshops. It is written by tkjain under tkjain's 10 simple principles of management series. It is useful for beginners. It is a helping guide for scholars, writers, thinkers, activists, researchers, educational institutions, business schools, universities, colleges, schools.

About the author: The author has experience of orgainsing and managing hundreds of seminars, conferences, workshops, plays, puppet shows, MDPs, specialised talk shows etc. The author was part of the organising team when Tom Alter’s plays were organised in Bikaner (organised by the Ajit Foundation for Social Development). The author was the part of the organising team of a series of seminars by Gandhi Research Foundation in Bikaner. The author was the organising chair during C3W 2012 and 2013 (C3W stands for Convention on Climate Change and Water Crisis, which attracted over 160 environmentalists, NGO representatives, Corporates and activists). The author believes that there should be continuity of seminars. The continuity of seminars will enable success in the seminars and people will remember and wait for the seminar (for example, C3W is organised every year and therefore people wait for it).

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tkjain's 10 principles series: About tkjain’s 10 Principle Series As an author of management, I have written e-books on 10 principles – which are simple, easy to remember, easy to understand and can reflect the most important aspects. These e-books are freely available on internet. Some of these are as under : Entrepreneurs’ guide to Managing Human Resource
Time Management Problem Solving and Decision Making Techniques for Administrators Strategic Decision Making Digital Marketing and Webpreneurship Edupreneur’s Guide to Academic Excellence and Educational Administration

1. student organising team : There should be a strong students organising team. The students learn a lot by organising these events. In C3W 2013, we had a four student team, which continuously worked and didnt sleep for 72 hours non-stop and did an amazing work of hospitality to 160+ delegates under the guidance of one senior faculty (who was CEO of the convention). These four students didnt say that they were tired, rather they said that they were highly satisfied as they learned a lot in managing the hospitality (logistics, stay arrangements, hospitality etc.). These four students have grown in their maturity, personality and presentation by the orginsing an event. the student organising team shold have lot of discussions and lot of debates regarding how to orgnise it, this will help them in their own development. The organising team should be prepared to spend sleepless

nights for ensuring success in the event. 2. sponsorship : There should be a core group for securing sponsorship of the event. The core committe of the sponsorship should use emails and contact UGC, AICTE, ICSSR, Fortune 500 companies, local companies (companies of

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neighbouring region), International funding agencies like UNDP, EC, etc and should also contact government departments like Ministries etc. A very responsible person should be a part of this committee. All the medium / large companies and organisations from the neighbouring region should be invited to be sponsor of some or other event. Media partnership is very important. One newspaper should be the media partner from the beginning to highlight the progress and proper publicity should be there for 10 months for success. Invitation committee should work in close association with sponsorship committee as many sponsors will be requested to send some nominees for the seminar. 3. stay arrangements, logistics, receptions and overall hospitality arrangements : - In C3W 2013, with 150 delegates, our hospitality team had sleepless nights for 72 hours. The hotels should be booked in advance and logistics, hospitality and arrangements should be outsourced through some event management company. The delegates should know in advance about the name of hotel, the address of the hotel, the contact persons, the approximate distance from Railway Station / Airport to the hotel and to the University so that they may hire taxis and reach on their own (they should be provided detailed map showing the venue, the hotel, the important locations with help line numbers). All the delegates should be provided with ample food coupons so that they can take tea, breakfast, lunch and dinner as per their choice from the Food Exhibition / Food Counters. There should be large number of food shops / counters with varieties of food and the delegates should have ample choice for the food (they should have coupons which they can use in any counter). 4. online marketing for registrations : It should be started 18 months before the event. The conference should be properly publicised through online marketing using various websites like www.Conferencealerts.com etc. so that scholars and researchers can come to know about it well in advance. Do post your seminar’s homepage on websites like www.linkedin.com,

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www.twitter.com, www.facebook.com .The registration fees should be different for the following categories : - a. Corporate Delegates b. Invited Participants c. Academicians d. Research Scholars, f. NGO representatives g. Students from Schools h. Students from Colleges /Universities. Following should not have to pay any registration fees : - a. Invited speakers b. Invited delegates c. Invited innovators d. Invited VVIPs e. Invited social activists, writers, journalists, media representatives, film makers, dramatists and artists. I recommend to use the following website for starting registration panel for the seminar: - http://cmt.research.microsoft.com/cmt/ 5. globalisation : In today's time every conference, seminar, workshop should be globalised. Partnership with foreign universities, educational and research institutions will improve the quality of the seminar proceedings. 6. Invitations for sessions, exhibitions and event planning: - Along with a seminar, following exhibitions should be organised : a Exhibition of related products/ services b. Exhibition of ethnic food / food festival c. Exhibition of latest technologies/ govt. departments on related themes d. Exhibition of folk products / local products from that region e. Exhibition of new traditional products / folk products e. Students' scientific projects. These exhibitions / shows should be open to the public and a media partner should regularly give information on these. These should be properly publicised so that people may come to attend these exhibitions. Companies will also benefit by participation in these events. An event management company may be hired for helping in success in these activities. 7. publications : - the proceedings of each session should be published immediately on youtube / webposts / webinar format so that these are live instantly and watched by people from across the globe. The texts of the sessions should also be uploaded on the website regularly. In addition a seminar newsletter should be started by the students highlighting the progress / achievements / participation.

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8. amazing rewards based on performance, presentation, participation and interactions : - there should be attractive awards and rewards on good presentation, good contents - like Best Paper Award, Quizes, Environment oriented play awards, Best Presentation Award, Best Innovation Award, Best Photography / Coverage of seminar Award. 9. concrete results : - Every seminar should result in concrete results and should enable the participants to go with some great benefits. These concrete results could be in the form of acceptance of projects by funding agencies / government / banks or development of some code of conduct (during C3W 2012 we had developed a code of conduct about Corporate Social Responsibility). 10.entertainment, exhibitions, films, sight seeing, networking and other attractions : - participants also wish to participate in entertaining events. During the C3W there were Creative Cultural Nights, which were extremely liked by the participants. There should be entries from other colleges, schools, institutions, film makers, play groups and artists for cultural nights. All the entertainment events should be theme based - and the theme should be related to the theme of the seminar. Feature Films / Art Films on the theme of the seminar should also be shown. In the mornings there should be Heritage walk with a visit to important places for sight seeing and for appreciating the cultural heritage of the city. The curtain raiser event should be organised in joint collaboration with all the industry associations with invitation to all important persons, leaders including political leaders so that the event gives an opportunity to interact.
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